Denver Deputy Mayor Don Mares leads a ribbon-cutting at the new Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region and Armenians of Colorado office Monday morning. He is joined by Armenian National Committee of America Western Region executive director Elen Asatryan, Armenians of Colorado board president Sona Hedeshian, ANCA community development coordinator Simon Maghakyan, AOC as well as a number of state legislators. (Photo by Evan Semon)

An emerging political presence stepped farther out into the Colorado spotlight Monday, as Armenians of Colorado and Armenian National Committee of Americaopened a shared office in the basement of the First Baptist Church, across 14th Street from the Capitol.

The office will be a hub for the state’s nearly 5,000 Armenian-Americans as well as the Western regional office for ANCA, which will serve Colorado and all the Western states outside of California.

The office will help raise the profile of Armenian immigrants and the unrest in the homeland, as well as assisting Coloradans of Armenian descent with voter registration, political involvement and educational opportunities, said Elen Asatryan, executive director for ANCA, headquartered in Los Angeles.

Colorado lawmakers locked in partisan tiffs in the final days of the legislative session will lay down their arms and join arms around the issue of mental health Monday. In a public bipartisan ceremony Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper will sign a proclamation declaring May Mental Health Month in the state.

The noon ceremony in the West Foyer of the Capitol also will be led by Democratic House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst of Boulder and Republican Rep. Clarice Navarro of Pueblo. Attendees can receive a free mental-health wellness screening courtesy of Mental Health Colorado, the event’s organizer.

Denver City Council members take part in the first meeting of the term in July 2015, including, from left, Wayne New, Jolon Clark, Stacie Gilmore and Rafael Espinoza. (Jon Murray, The Denver Post)

The Denver City Council this week released its work plan for the year, focusing heavily on transportation, affordable housing and jobs for residents.

Those three overarching priorities also track closely with spending imperatives the council set Friday morning as part of its annual budget retreat, which is aimed at voicing the council’s preferences as Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration puts together the 2017 city budget.

The council’s work plan, issued Monday, is the first such effort in memory. Council President Chris Herndon says he plans to create working groups that will focus on each area — and could draft proposals to address certain issues later this year.

Members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho rally on the Colorado Capitol in 2014 to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre. (File photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)

Columbus Day will live on in Colorado after legislation to abolish it was voted down Monday night. Rep. Joe Salazar, a Democrat from Thornton who sponsored the bill, originally sought to have Oct. 12 renamed Indigenous People’s Day. He dropped that part of the proposal with an amendment during the committee hearing.

The four-hour debate centered on celebrating Christopher Columbus, who enslaved or slaughtered indigenous people, or recognizing Italian heritage. Dozens of Coloradans made impassioned cases for or against the proposal before the House State, Veterans and Military Committee. The committee voted 7-2 against advancing the bill.

“It’s a controversial bill because it’s about what our state stands for,” Salazar told the committee.

The Rev. Nelson Bock of Together Colorado leads a prayer at a press conference Monday to support a potential ballot measure to remove references to slavery from the state constitution. (Photo by Joey Bunch/The Denver Post)

Clergy and community members gathered at the state Capitol Monday to campaign for Senate Concurrent Resolution 006, which would put a measure on the ballot to make it clear that prison labor isn’t “slavery.”

They want the reference to slavery edited out of the state constitution, which was written in 1877.

“To equate incarceration as a punishment for a crime with the abhorrent. immoral and ungodly institution of slavery is an affront to both the dignity of incarcerated persons as well as to the dignity of people whose ancestors were subject to the cruelty of slavery in our country,” said the Rev. Nelson Bock of Together Colorado, the multi-faith, multi-racial organization pushing the measure.

Rep. Daniel Kagan, is sponsoring legislation to allow those receiving a tax refund to deposit it in more than one account. (File photo by Craig F. Walker/The Denver Post)

Here’s an interesting piece of legislation for tax day: splitting up where your state refund goes. House Bill 1371 would allow taxpayers to get their refund from a combination of an old-fashioned check, direct deposits into one or more savings accounts, one or more checking accounts and/or one or more CollegeInvest savings accounts.

The way it works now, a refund can come from a check or go to savings, checking or CollegeInvest account, but you can only get it in a lump sum in one place.

This month the left-leaning Bell Policy Center released a brief saying the options would help families save and build assets. Moreover, taxpayers already can divide their federal refunds, an option used by hundreds of thousands of Coloradans, according to Bell.

Rep. J. Paul Brown is used to House Democrats in the majority smacking down the legislation he and his fellow Republicans hold dear. So you can’t blame the rancher from Ignacio for being all smiles after the chamber gave a 65-0 blessing to his bill to study water storage on Colorado’s bone-dry Eastern Plains.

“We’re always depending on the federal government for our storage,” he said after the House adjourned Thursday after handing him a significant victory. “Finally we’re going to do something in Colorado. At least we’re going to study it, and that’s a start.”

The legislation, if it passes in Senate, where Brown’s fellow Republicans have a majority, it would study the volume of water Colorado has a right to store and use that is instead being lost to Nebraska via the South Platte River. It would look at where a reservoir could be located and how much it might cost.

A rainbow appears after a brief rain Oct. 18, 2015 at Colorado’s state Capitol building. (Brent Lewis, The Denver Post)

The state Capitol steps are going to be awfully busy Friday afternoon. A group of Donald Trump supporters angry about how all the delegates were awarded Ted Cruz at last weekend’s state Republican Party Convention are planning a protest from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Meanwhile an anti-corruption group called Represent.Denver has a rally from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

I wrote about the Trump rally — and one in support of the state GOP at the party headquarters in Greenwood — here.

Represent.Denver plans to call on elected leaders to support a national anti-corruption act.

Colorado state Rep. Clarice Navarro, talks with her then 5-year-old daughter, Jorji, during the opening day of the legislative session in 2013. (File photo by Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

Rep. Clarice Navarro, a Republican from Pueblo, says in an editorial that political attempts aimed at equal pay is more about politics than equal pay.

“Pay equity is already a Colorado policy,” she writes. “Creating additional legislation is a waste of time that serves political posturing more than it does the strong and hardworking women of this great state. As a woman, a minority and an elected official this legislation is certainly not on my agenda.”

House Democrats offered up four bills this session. House Bill 1001 to require contractors doing business with the state to meet equal-pay standards was killed in a Republican-led Senate committee on March 30. That same day, Senate Republicans killed another piece of legislation: House Bill 1166, to block would-be employers from asking about salary history, which proponents said would ahve helped women who earn less.

Five of the Colorado House Democrats’ chief advocates for equal pay say in a jointly written editorial the reason they carried legislation this year was to move Colorado “closer to the day when every individual earns what he or she deserves, regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation.”

Tuesday is national Equal Pay Day, which activists say represents the number of days in this year that the average working woman needed this year to make the same amount of money as her average male counterpart did last year. Events nationally include President Obama dedicating a monument to women’s equality near the White House.

Democrats made equal pay a priority this year. During the session, Democratic Reps. Jessie Danielson of Wheat Ridge and Janet Buckner of Aurora sponsored House Bill 1001 to require any company that bids on state contracts to meet equal-pay standards. Senate Republicans killed the legislation in committee on March 30.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.